


Specifically Just Their Bones

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Mountain Goats (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cosmic Horror Elements, Crack Treated Seriously, Jedi Mythology, Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: They say that sooner or later all Jedi get eaten by the last one. Sooner or later, their flesh must burn in the fire and leave behind nothing but their deeds to give hope and comfort to the living. The song has haunted Kylo’s mind since his earliest days. He has sung it in his sleep. Believed in it, cherished it, chased his rightful end through years of hard toil and other people’s skepticism.He has spent his whole life dreaming of the day his turn must eventually come.
Relationships: Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones
Comments: 16
Kudos: 15
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Specifically Just Their Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



> For confused passers-by: [The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtmGSJdvavY) is a Mountain Goats song.

Soft like an untempered blade, Ben Solo melts in the furnace of his uncle’s betrayal. The man who reforms from the molten lava is hard-forged, made to hold an edge. He is Darth Vader’s heir. Supreme Leader Snoke’s chosen apprentice. A weapon of the dark side and the final evolution in his bloodline’s mastery of the Force.

Kylo Ren bases his new lightsaber on designs from the Great Scourge of Malachor.

He bases his mask on the battle gear of the Knights of Ren.

And his cowl – the wraithlike black garment that he draws around his head and shoulders to perfect his menacing silhouette – his cowl, he bases on the whisper that has stalked the dreams of all the Jedi from all the planets in this putrid universe since time immemorial. The end that waits for all of them, with their dust piled high like parsnips on his plate. The host of the long feast. The devourer of calcium and rejecter of soft parts.

The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones.

Ben Solo is dead, and Kylo Ren has risen, and the Ultimate Jedi who has lurked in starving hibernation since the last days of Order 66 will rise with him anew. Together, they will consume the galaxy.

* * *

‘He’s not real, Ren.’ Supreme Leader Snoke’s voice is heavy with impatience. ‘You have rejected every other aspect of Luke Skywalker’s false teachings, and yet you cling like a child to his nursery rhymes.’

The Supreme Leader is always right – of course he is – but he doesn’t understand about the Ultimate Jedi. Perhaps it’s because he was never a Jedi himself, and so was never raised to fear the fire in which his flesh must eventually burn. ‘If he’s not real, then where did all the bones go? Why have we never recovered a single Jedi skeleton from any of the massacre sites?’

And then he braces himself, because sometimes the Supreme Leader encourages him to ask questions and other times he backhands him for impertinence and Kylo never knows which it’ll be until he sees the hand coming.

Today is a lenient day. For now. ‘There are any number of osteophageous life forms in the galaxy,’ says Supreme Leader Snoke. ‘To my knowledge, none of them are so picky as to eat _only_ the bones.’

‘But you concede the bones were most likely eaten.’

‘I have no opinion on the bones, and nor should you. I asked you to demonstrate your progress in the Force fear technique I taught you yesterday. Instead you are wasting my time reciting old Jedi lullabies.’

It’s not a lullaby. Kylo doesn’t dare test his luck by continuing to argue, but his faith is soul deep – _bone_ deep – and when he closes his eyes to sleep later that night, it rewards him with another vision of a black cowl fluttering down from the void to engulf him. He feels its warm, tattered edges wrap around him, caressing all the soft parts that the Ultimate Jedi is said to have no use for.

 _I have use for every part of you, Kylo Ren,_ the cowl whispers. _I’ve been so hungry._

‘I know you have,’ Kylo breathes into the darkness.

_Feed me more Jedi. Cut them down wherever you find them, burn their flesh and keep their ashes in a shrine. But save the bones for me. It’s the bones that have the calcium._

* * *

He earns a new name: Jedi Killer. His shrine is piled high with ash that swirls into the air in soft white clouds each time he opens or closes the door. Flakes of it land on him while he prays, gleaming white against the black of his cowl.

He breaks three ribs in a training accident. ‘Add a calcium supplement to your diet,’ Snoke advises, looming over him as he wheezes on the floor. And then, realising his mistake: ‘Mouth shut, Ren. I’m tired of hearing it.’

* * *

_Bones,_ the cowl whispers to him at night. _Bones, bones, bones, bones._

He lifts it to his mouth to inhale the scent, wraps it around his fist, strokes his cock with a firm grip and lets the tattered fabric rasp against his most tender skin. It’s more than faith, more than religion, more even than lust – it’s obsession. He wants to kneel at the Ultimate Jedi’s feet, serve the Ultimate Jedi’s will, submit to the Ultimate Jedi’s osseous appetite. He wants the Ultimate Jedi to penetrate deep inside his skin and consume his bones from the inside out until he’s nothing more than a limp sack of flesh.

He settles for coming all over his cowl with the Ultimate Jedi’s name on his lips. As he washes it clean afterwards, he pretends that his seed is liquefied marrow and his softening cock is a calcified shell drained of all its life-sustaining nutrients.

* * *

They say that sooner or later all Jedi get eaten by the last one. Sooner or later, their flesh must burn in the fire and leave behind nothing but their deeds to give hope and comfort to the living. The song has haunted Kylo’s mind since his earliest days. He has sung it in his sleep. Believed in it, cherished it, chased his rightful end through years of hard toil and other people’s skepticism. He has spent his whole life dreaming of the day his turn must eventually come.

When it comes, he expects joy. Relief. Satisfaction at the end of his relentless work. But as he lies bleeding out on the ground with the bitter grime of a failed last battle on his skin, the final feast is nowhere to be seen. Everything hurts. His pulse is weakening. His bones are untouched.

‘Cleave to the precepts you’re given,’ he sings, desperate, his voice a near-silent series of gurgles through the blood that bubbles from his lips. ‘Remember those who went before and cleared a way for you.’

 _Let your deeds give hope and comfort to the living._ The galaxy rumbles; the words come from everywhere and nowhere. _What hope and comfort do your deeds have to offer the living, Kylo Ren?_

He opens his eyes. (When did he close them?) All around him is formless haze, tinged bloody through his fading vision. The battlefield is gone. His allies, his soldiers, his enemies, all gone – the only thing remaining is the black cowled figure that looms over his body, small enough to fit in his field of vision and yet so impossibly large as to engulf the known universe. 

It’s him. Kylo’s god, his master, his eternal love. The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones. Come, at last, to feast on him.

 _No._ Paralysing fear grips Kylo’s body in a rictus as he looks up into those galaxy-deep eyes. _I only feast on the bones of Jedi. You, Kylo Ren, are not a Jedi._

‘I…’ His mouth doesn’t want to form words. Kylo has always believed he could feel the Ultimate Jedi’s presence beside him; it was nothing but a shadow, an echo, compared to this all-powerful being that now stands over him. ‘I gave you everything,’ he manages, spitting out a gob of sour metallic blood. ‘Served you loyally. Fed you all those other Jedi.’

 _You did. And they were delicious. But the laws of nature cannot be changed. My digestive enzymes can extract no nutrition from the bones of Force-adepts who have turned from the path of light. Your calcium shall seep into the soil and nourish lesser life forms, but it will not nourish me._ The Ultimate Jedi pauses, thinking thoughts no doubt too profound to be expressed in human language. _A shame. I have grown fond of you, my young servant. I should have liked to crunch upon your skull._

‘There has to be another way.’ Tears leave tracks through the blood and grime on Kylo’s cheeks. He has never felt more pathetic.

 _For Kylo Ren? No. That man’s nutritional value is lost to me. Ben Solo, though. Ben Solo was a Jedi. Him, I could have eaten quite happily. Oh, well. There will be other meals._ And he leaves.

Lying broken on the ground, fighting to keep his battered lungs breathing in and out, Kylo’s physical pain fades beneath the weight of his despair and remorse. He can’t die in this place, unwanted, uneaten, forsaken by the birthright that his uncle promised him in lullabies since the days of his youth. He thought he could walk in the Ultimate Jedi’s footsteps, slaying lesser Jedi left and right – arrogance. Stupidity. All he has done is make his own bones worthless.

But there’s another way.

He can’t die in this place. He _mustn’t_ die in this place. He must let the inferno of his pain melt him back down into lava, let himself cool not as tempered Kylo Ren but as soft, weak Ben Solo who will spend the rest of his days searching for a way to atone for his many crimes.

He will survive. He will find redemption. He will only die once he has picked his own carcass clean of the anger and hate that lured him from the Jedi path.

And then at last, once he is pure, the Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones will consume him.


End file.
